Credit: NASA
Researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) and the Smithsonian Institution are taking a unique approach to safeguarding Earth’s biodiversity against global catastrophes—preserving animal cells on the moon. The team has successfully cryopreserved skin cells from the starry goby, a reef fish native to Hawaiian waters. Now stored at the Smithsonian, these samples are the first to be prepared for a lunar biorepository. Craters at the lunar north and south poles are ideal locations for a biorepository as they are shadowed in perpetual darkness and maintain extremely cold temperatures.